by Robert Irwin
However, Michael did allow me to use his phone to talk to Dad. I was on the phone a long time, first explaining the new situation and the possible consequences and options and then I got on to describing to him how I had been faking accounts in my diary of arguments with him and other people. When I read from the diary my ludicrous and wholly fictitious argument with the minister at the funeral, he actually laughed. It is the first time in over a year that I have heard him laugh. I promised to get in touch again when I knew what the hell I was doing.
By pre-arrangement I met Sally in a cafe near Cosmic’s pad. After all, Cosmic and I should now be allies in exile from the Lodge. I wanted his advice, plus I wanted to know if and in what manner he had been hassled since his expulsion. First, of course, I would have to apologise for having written what I wrote about him in my diary, but at that stage I obviously could not have afforded to have had my cover blown. I had had to stick to the Lodge’s rules. Well, all this was irrelevant, because no one came to the door. As I kept on pointlessly ringing the bell, it came to me how much I needed him now. Then I thought that maybe he was dead, just like in that dream I had. He looked so pale and shifty when I last saw him lurking by the Lodge. Maybe an emissary of the Lodge had got to him and commanded him to commit suicide. Maybe they did not even need to do that. They might just think bad thoughts at him and he would lose his will to eat and he would starve to death at the foot of his cardboard pyramid. Death is Life’s Answer to the question “Why?” Then I thought that maybe the Lodge’s Adepts would go to the cemetery and resurrect Cosmic’s corpse and use it as a deathly bloodhound to hunt me down. Then I thought I must be going mad to be thinking such thoughts. This is London in the summer of 67, not England at the height of the witch-craze or Voodoo-ridden Haiti. Still, it seemed risky to linger and after ten minutes more of ringing the bell we hurried away. Since then the thought has occurred to me that maybe Cosmic is OK, but very paranoid. Maybe he was looking down on us from his window and not answering the door because he thought that I was an emissary from the Lodge.
For want of a better idea, we went on to Robert Drapers’s place. He has a tiny room in one of those little houses behind Stamford Street. Back in the 1870s Rimbaud and Verlaine smoked dope in Stamford Street and worked in a cardboard-box factory nearby. Through living in the same area, Robert hopes to acquire some of their mana, or baraka, or whatever. But, as Sally pointed out, he’s just as likely to catch the mana of the owner of the cardboard-box factory. Robert has a fuggy little room with a bed and just enough space for a record-player at the foot of the bed. Bert Jansch was playing. We crowded on to the bed, rolled a few joints and talked. I kept trying to get across the message that the Lodge was really dangerous and that no one should mix with it, but Robert was too high to take it seriously. He said that it sounded just like a novel and that he had always wanted to live in a novel. Apart from anything else, there would be more space in a novel than there was in his tiny room. I tried to get him to promise not to go near Horapollo House, but he said that I was just trying to hog all its wonderful magical powers to myself.
We had lunch downstairs in the shared kitchen. Robert belongs to the Cosmic school of chefs, so what we had was muesli, brussels sprouts and condensed milk, followed by Tizer to wash away the taste of the condensed milk. Robert was telling us about the Notting Hill Project, Rachmanism, the history of race riots in West London and stuff like that. Then Sally started talking about her dreams and how Daffy Duck has been warning her in her dreams that something pretty heavy was going to happen. Sally’s dreams are always in bright technicolour and they are entirely peopled by characters like Yogi Bear, Woody Woodpecker, Dylan the Rabbit and Tom and Jerry. Until a few months ago, when we had a conversation about dreaming, she had assumed that everyone had cartoon-film dreams, just like she did. When she has nightmares about the Lodge, it’s Goofy, Zebedee and Sweet-pea who emerge from the shadows and with low mutterings begin to invoke the Evil One.
As I drew on the post-prandial joint, a kind of elation stole over me. Maybe Robert was right, after all. Yes, it was and is scary, but it is also exciting. At last something is happening in my life. Robert and Sally had moved on to Sobranie Black Russian cigarettes. We appeared as if dressed in smoke. It was like sitting under a volcano with little bits of ash ceaselessly rising and falling. Here and now in a little room off Stamford Street was a node of Destiny. We are the Golden Generation and most of us will never die, because, before that happens, the skies will be rolled up like a scroll, Time will be brought to a stop and the workaday world will be replaced by the Mysterium Tremendum. It is because of our privileged place at the end of history that drugs are starting to circulate in society. The function of drugs is to prepare us for the end of the world. Through drugs we can commence the adventure of inner exploration and make ourselves ready for our future metamorphosis and passage to a higher state. I know it sounds crazy to say that God can be found inside a sugar cube, but being crazy doesn’t stop it being just possibly true. And in the meantime, setting God aside, we can use drugs for psychic engineering and devise special cocktails to make a gentler, better society.
Robert is a bit more cynical and cautious. He is just dipping his toe into the waters of the drug culture – just like he goes around sampling meditation techniques and occult masters. Still, I hope he is careful. He has just made a mess of his finals and has broken up with a girlfriend. He was laughing at Sally’s technicolour nightmares and at my ideas about the future of drugs (and the state my hair was in was pretty hilarious too), but anyone can see that fundamentally he is depressed, lonely and vulnerable. So he is exactly the right material for any head-hunting cult.
I had been vaguely thinking of spending the rest of the day with him, just shooting the breeze and waiting for someone to come up with an idea about what we should do next. Then I suddenly thought of Maud. God knows, I did not want to, but she had to be faced. I had to warn her. So Sally and I rushed off in order to reach Gear Shears before closing time. When we got there, Sally said that she would wait for me outside. So I had to go in alone. I was dreading encountering Maud. I thought she might lose her cool and maim me for life by delivering one of those wheeling reverse karate kicks. But it was worse than that. When I entered, her face lit up, just for a moment, but then when she registered how I was looking, it fell again. I would have felt better if I had been given the task of slowly breaking the wings of a baby bird.
‘Maud, we have got to talk. Sally and I will be waiting for you when you can get away from the shop.’
‘Can’t you give me an idea what this is about now? And what is Sally doing with you?’
‘It is really serious, Maud. I’ll explain in the pub.’
It was a rather unpleasant Irish pub, which served long-haired weirdos with obvious reluctance. Half an hour later Maud joined us there. I rose to introduce her.
‘Sally, this is Maud. Maud this is Sally – my real girlfriend.’
Maud sat down heavily and turned her face away in a futile attempt to conceal from us that she was silently crying. I suppose I should have touched her and given her some comfort, but I could not bring myself to do so. Instead, I set to doggedly explaining how I had infiltrated the Lodge in order to get material for my PhD on ‘Inter-group dynamics and peer-group reinforcement in a North-London coven of sorcerers’, how the Lodge had forced me to pretend that I had broken up with Sally (though in fact we carried on seeing each other), and how Felton and Granville had bullied me into filling in a computer-dating form. The worst bit of all was trying to explain, without being too precise, how Felton had wanted me to lure Maud into the Lodge for some unspecified nefarious purpose. At the end of all this, it came as a kind of relief to announce that I thought that my life might be in danger.
‘Now they have sussed out that I was a spy in their midst, Sally and I are going on the run. As I say, I think my life is at risk. I don’t think that you are in any danger, but I thought I ought to warn you. It is just possible th
ey might think that I have taken refuge with you or something. Does the Lodge have your address?’
‘Don’t be silly. Why should they?’ Her voice was muffled and chokey.
‘OK, that’s cool. So you are probably not in any danger. But I’ll ring you in a few days to make sure. Meanwhile, when you are back at your place, don’t open the door unless you are sure who – or what – is on the other side. Those people at Horapollo House are seriously bad news. The Lodge introduced me to a man called Julian. Now that man is dead. Either they murdered him, or, more likely, they told him to commit suicide and he was so scared of them that he did it. Also they are into weird sex and a lot of other stuff besides.’
Aware of the futility of the gesture, I took the rosary and crucifix off my neck and passed it to Maud. She held it in her hand, without seeming to register what it was.
‘Oh Peter, what is all this shit you have landed me in?’
I had feared her anger, but she was not angry – just miserably stricken.
Without looking at me, she reached out and pleaded,
‘Don’t go without me. I need you. Take me with you and Sally.’
I could see Sally tensing at this, but she turned to Sally,
‘Make him take me with you, please.’
‘You sort this out between yourselves,’ said Sally. ‘I’m going to the Ladies.’
Why was I doing this? Why had I not telephoned or even written to Maud? Maybe it was because I was mad? No, that was not the reason. We were having this meeting because I had wanted Sally to see Maud and for her to know that she had no reason at all to feel jealous. But Sally was angry. The two of them sitting beside one another, one ash-blonde and the other raven-haired, but both terribly pale, had seemed to me like figures in a fairy tale. While Sally was gone, Maud reached across the table to take my hands in hers. She wanted to know where we were going. I could honestly tell her that I had no idea. Then she offered to help find us a place to hide out in and she also wanted to know if I needed to borrow any money. I kept telling her that I already felt guilty enough about involving her in my affairs. She was safe only if she kept away from me.
‘Peter, are you sure that you are all right?’ She was smiling bravely now. ‘This all sounds so mad. I mean, isn’t Satanism illegal? How can all this be happening?’
I could see Sally coming back from the Ladies, so I rose from the table.
‘I really am very fond of you Maud,’ I said. (A complete lie, of course.)
‘Are you really?’
‘I’ll get in touch as soon as its safe to do so, I promise.’
We rose to leave. I nervously brushed Maud’s cheek with my lips.
‘You will look after him please, Sally, and see that he does not come to any harm?’ were Maud’s last words.
I do not think Maud herself really has any need to worry. The Satanists are not going to bother with a dim-witted, little hairdresser in Camden Town. Besides, even if anyone did track her down and started hassling her, he would run the risk of being laid out cold with a karate chop to the neck. Anyway, it’s great to have finally said goodbye to Maud. These last few weeks, it has been like I was dating an albatross.
While Sally was in the Ladies, she had come up with a plan. We were going to Waterloo Station. From there we would get a train to Dover and the ferry to Boulogne. Once we got to Boulogne, we would work out what to do next. So we took the 68 bus from Camden Town to Waterloo. On the bus Sally wanted to talk about Maud.
‘I feel sorry for her. She is really straight, isn’t she? You shouldn’t have got her involved in all this.’
‘I didn’t have any choice, Sally. I had to do what the Lodge told me to do.’
‘Oh yeah, and you make it sound like you have been undergoing some hideous ordeal. But she is really beautiful, isn’t she?’
‘No way is she beautiful. She’s horribly fleshy and graceless.’
‘Yeah, she is beautiful. It’s like she drips with feminine sexuality.’
I was not really paying much attention to Sally’s fantasy. I was getting cold feet about Waterloo Station. It is the subject of a song by the Kinks, is it not? ‘Waterloo Station, you’re bringing me down.’ If the Lodge operated like the police do when they are hunting a murderer, then its minions would be watching all mainline stations. Waterloo is definitely illomened. It is described in Aleister Crowley’s novel, Moonchild, as ‘the funereal antechamber to Woking’. I just knew in my bones that any journey from Waterloo Station would be a bad trip. I could not set foot in Waterloo Station.
So then what happened next? I will have to write for a hundred days and nights to cover everything which happened and what I thought about it and what Sally thought about what I thought and how … Oh never mind. Writing things up is a never-ending process. In order to go out on to the street, you have to open the door, and in order to open the door you have to turn the handle and in order to turn the handle you have to grip it and in order to grip it … It is like digging a hole on the beach close to the water’s edge and, as you dig, the water fills the hole you are digging and you try to scoop it out with your hand, but more water is coming in all the time. There is no limit to consciousness. And here I sit in the dark wood still writing. Sally has started to undress, so that she can dance without the hassle of clothes. She says that she is going to perform the Dance of the Seven Diaries.
What happened next was that I told Sally that I had a bad feeling about Waterloo, so, instead of entering the station, we went to the Hole in the Wall pub. Now what? Evening was coming on and I had had two bad nights in succession and I was getting too tired to think, but Sally was insistent that we had to get out of London that night. She said that we had to put ourselves beyond the range of the malevolent vibes of the Lodge. Then I remembered the ampoules of methedrine. It was so wonderful – like finding magic beans in my pocket. Methedrine neat tastes really nasty, so I broke the ampoules into the remnants of our beers and then we sat and waited for the stuff to hit. That took twenty minutes, or maybe half an hour. I was just beginning to get the speed feeling on my teeth, when Sally had another idea.
‘We will walk out of London. It will be so cool. The Lodge won’t be expecting that. We will walk out of London and, as we do so, we will be walking out from our old lives. We will walk all night. It will be a buzz. And we will see where we end up in the morning.’
Sally was all lit up. Partly it was the brilliance of her idea, but partly it was the effect of the speed. Outside the Hole in the Wall pub, she had us stand over a gutter and discard our watches. In this way, we made a symbolic renunciation of our old lives.
‘Let’s follow the sun,’ Sally said. ‘We’ll go west.’
By now, of course, there was no sun, but I think that we thought that we could catch up with it at some point on the road, for the sun is not a speedy traveller. In the city the stars are invisible, but as we headed down Lambeth Walk, I recalled how when I was working in the library of Horapollo House, I dipped into the casebooks of Simon Forman, the seventeenth-century astrologer, and read how he used to ride over Lambeth Marsh, then a favoured place for murders and drownings. London is really the Shambala of the West, a city of sorcerers – Simon Forman, John Dee, Robert Fludd, Francis Barret, Aleister Crowley – a place wherein there is no salvation.
Donovan’s ‘Mad John who came down from Birmingham very hastily’ was silently playing in my head. The speed was really beginning to work within me. I was burning up in a pure white flame. As speed hits the jaws, there is an odd metallic taste in the mouth. I sensed that I was undergoing an alchemic transformation. I was being transmuted into quicksilver. And Sally was the same, so my speed was talking to her speed and we could not stop talking. Because this is a Night of Power, we are getting to know each other in a way that we have never known each other before and, as we walk, we talk about scientology, hairdressing, Elvira Madigan, the ego, cats’ eyes, spiritual death, epilepsy, Pink Floyd, sandals, mythic journeys, déjà vu, the meaning of the min
i-skirt, Persian architecture, graffiti, authenticity, the four worst things in the world, Marmite. After all those weary evenings with Maud, it was so wonderful to be with Sally and say anything I felt like saying and not to have to taper my words to her understanding. We were true peripatetic philosophers. No, we were actually gods, even though we had forgotten that that is what we were, but now at last we had raised the whirlwind and, having done so, we travelled on it. We were and are alive.
‘Why so fast, you young things?’ a tramp sitting outside Vauxhall Station cried out and he lurched up and tried to grab at Sally, but Sally Speed and Quicksilver Pete, travelling on their wheels of fire, were far too fast for any lumbering tramp. All sorts of denizens of the night sought to lure us from our chosen path. As we were walking through Wandsworth, a night bus came rattling by. Its conductor stood on the back platform.
‘Last bus! Room for two more inside!’ he shouted to us. His grin was one huge rictus.
But I made the sign of the cross and turned away, for I had the fancy it might be the same bus that I had jumped off the day before and that, if we got on it, we should discover Bridget and Charles Felton sitting up on top in wait for us. Wandsworth was where the paranoia came on. It is definitely a place of omens. For example, there was a shop at the bottom of the hill, whose brightly-lit window was crowded with deceitful and nasty things: a mock spider, a plastic turd, an innocuous-looking whoopee cushion, an exploding pen, a fried egg with a cigarette stubbed out on it, vials of itching powder, false breasts, a stink-bomb disguised as a cigarette, a rubbery-looking ‘Van Gogh’s ear’ and, at the centre of all these lying objects, was a big box of conjuring tricks and on its lid the image of the Father of Lies himself, Mephistopheles, who appeared to grin and gesture mockingly at me.
As we stood pressed against the window of the joke-shop, a gang of Hell’s Angels went roaring by on their bikes. Ghostly riders of the way, their sockets were sheathed in steel and the emptiness of their sockets concealed by their goggles. Sally thought that they were just like the Nazguls in The Lord of the Rings. I thought that they might be blind outriders travelling in advance of the Wild Hunt. I had a fantasy image of a column of high-stepping runners in flowing robes emerging from Horapollo House. The Master would be in the lead and he would be carrying a black candle and behind him would follow Charles and Bridget Felton with slavering Boy straining against his leash, Laura, Granville, Agatha and the rest of them, all carrying candles, and the Lady Babalon mounted on the padding Beast would come slowly on riding behind.
